There is accumulated garbage, weeds, bad smells and dirty surfaces in the two bicycle sheds that Lisbon City Council installed in 2019/20 in Entrecampos and Marquês de Pombal. The structures cost around 35 thousand euros.
The bicycle hangar installed next to Entrecampos train station at the end of 2019It used to open and close with a mobile application and a code: only registered users could use it. Now just pull the handle. And if before we could find this parking lot relatively fullNow only two or three bikes are usually parked inside.
Lisbon City Council installed this hangar in October 2019, as part of a European project. With capacity for eight bikes, the equipment had video surveillance, a tool kit, a mini air measuring station and energy supply from solar panels and a wind system.
Today, the wind generator no longer exists and the six solar panels have been reduced to just one. There are also no tools left inside the structure, which shows signs of abandonment. There is accumulated garbage, weeds, a bad smell, dirty glass and some graffiti. The technological system that previously kept the hangar closed and restricted access to registered users doesn't seem to be working - you can open the box by pulling up the manual handle and then close it in the same way.
The Entrecampos hangar provided comfort and security for those who wanted to combine the train with the bicycle, leaving the latter safe in a covered, guarded area away from adverse weather conditions and vandalism. This hangar is still a covered bicycle parking lot, but anyone can open and close it - no registration, no code, no app.
Months after the hangar in Entrecampos, Lisbon City Council installed another one in Rua Mouzinho da Silveira, in the Marquês de Pombal business district. The infrastructure, placed there in March 2020The hangar, located just before the first lockdown, offers space for at least 10 bikes, including larger bikes and cargo bikes. Like the one in Entrecampos, this hangar worked in the same way: free registration on the PVerde app and unlocking the door via Bluetooth or a personal numeric code.
The Marquês de Pombal hangar is still operational via the app, but its interior shows dirt, bad smells and some accumulated garbage - also signs of abandonment. It should be noted that the app used to access this hangar is PVerde, which is not even translated into Portuguese and has an unintuitive interface in Spanish.
On the Base.gov portal, it is available a contract worth approximately 20,000 euros with Easy Cycledirect award for the supply of the Marquês de Pombal bike hangar. The document is dated November 2019; the contracted company was responsible for the installation of the hangar, for supporting the "operating and maintenance costs of the access management system" and for handing over all equipment documentation and database access to CML. The hangar at Entrecampos cost 14.8 thousand eurosin a direct award to the Spanish company Intelligent Parking SL.
In 2021, EMEL presented a network of 13 BiciParks in 13 of the car parks, providing a total of 238 covered and guarded spaces for bicycles. Unlike the hangars installed by Lisbon City Council on the street, EMEL's BiciParks work with the Navegante card and a monthly activation of the service. The Entrecampos and Marquês hangars were never integrated into this BiciParks network and/or renovated with the same access system, making them easier to use. They seem to have been abandoned.
